Should Parents Become Big Brother
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According to this article- yes, they should. The authors opinion is pretty clear about that. There is not a single paragraph giving whatever objections to permanent presence in a childs cyber privacy. There are no cons stated but only a couple of paragraphs in defense of invasion slightly balanced with a two-side trust between adults and kids.
The awareness that internet contacts and online instant messaging can be dangerous for kids and teenagers is not on a personal level any more. It has become an important issue and a problem demanding attention by society as a whole. At this instance the article “Should Parents Become Big Brother?” falls exactly in place. More or less it gives an option to deal with a complicated situation that parents face and probably wonder what the adequate reaction should be.
The real life stories, persuasively combined with scientific research and the easily applicable advices that build up the article create an overall impression that the author is genuinely concerned about this issue and the ways to cope with it. A more thorough examination actually leads to the thought that he (or she) fails to maintain this first impression and that is when the figures take place. If it is a matter of ethics and responsibility then how do the prices of all the listed software products relate to it? It is obvious that the article is not an abstract from a science magazine, but even though it should be mentioned that the nature of the problem suggests more possible solutions than buying and installing a spy program.
Apart from almost directly advertising various monitoring software, the evidences provided by the author include some cases in which kids that were not suspecting anything, were saved from someone elses or their own irresponsibility exactly owing to such computer programs. These monitory systems let parents not only access confidential information, but also control their childrens web sessions. Moreover, the idea of this process is supported by institutions such as the one mentioned in the article. The author cites a psychologist and expert of the National Institute on Media and the Family who claims that the real world and the cyber one are much alike when it comes to parents taking care of their children, so that makes the real and the cyber worlds alike in terms of potential threats. The Youth Internet Safety Survey gives the reader some statistics to prove this point. The expert also implies the idea of reaching a balanced observation that has nothing to do with extremes- neither paranoia, nor absence or lack of control. However, the information not provided is the answer to the inevitable question “how?”. Nowhere in the whole article is mentioned how those kids reacted when they found out that they were victims of espionage by their family.